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New plant species from the heart of Texas

July 9, 2014

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Collectors found two specimens of the prickly plant in 1974 and 1990 in Texas. Then, for two decades, the 14-inch-tall plant was identified wrongly as one species, then another, then a third. Now--after a long search turned up a "pathetic, wilted" third specimen--a University of Utah botanist and colleagues identified the spiny plant as a new, possibly endangered species and named it "from the heart" in Latin because it was found in Valentine, Texas.
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SourceUniversity of Utah

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